Thanks, guys. It's just a guess really, based on what they've been saying publicly and some of the analyses other fans have dug up.

Hard to say how well these guys play, and hard to say if this tactic pays off until 2-3 years from now. This management team hasn't been deliberately stupid before so I'm willing to wait and see. Hard to pass up on Dineen and Girard though.

My key point though is that they didn't do anything differently this draft from the last (philosophically). The result is just how the market shook out.

I think some people are generally confusing the idea of a player being a lower ceiling type with a player being a "ready soon" type. I think the difference can be highlighted with a guy like Gauthier who, when drafted, was sort of billed as the ultimate "low ceiling but safe bet" kind of guy and while there's some evidence to suggest that still might be the case I don't think too many of us are really expecting him to be a NHL regular until at least draft+4.

A lot of the things being cited as positives with the draft class(the ability for europeans to come to AHL immediately, european prospects playing against "grown men", different players having different development curves) aren't exactly new so it would stand to reason that there should at least be something in the way of evidence supporting this as a draft theory. I think the reason we're not seeing that is that a lot of what they did is actually bucking the information we have. As an immediate example, there's not a strong history of undrafted CHL players making big impacts in the NHL but there is a pretty extensive history of undrafted 20 year olds in the CHL putting up big numbers as overagers.

Bucking the evidence we have isn't always a recipe for disaster or even a bad decision but I do think it should at least be acknowledged.

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Give a man the reputation of an early riser and he can sleep 'til noon-Mark Twain

This management team hasn't been deliberately stupid before so I'm willing to wait and see. Hard to pass up on Dineen and Girard though.

I think if you're inclined to put everything this management team does in the best possible light it's probably misleading to then use those reads as support for continuing to do so. They have done stupid things before.

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Give a man the reputation of an early riser and he can sleep 'til noon-Mark Twain

It's not entirely unheard of, you can find cases of a team drafting 3 or so players after the first round who went on to have NHL careers(the Blackhawks in '04, Kings in '07, Bruins in '04, Sens in '09, Leafs in '06).

But it does represent the upper limit. You're also almost certainly talking about one or so marginal contributors or guys who only find their NHL game after multiple spots.

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Give a man the reputation of an early riser and he can sleep 'til noon-Mark Twain

It's not entirely unheard of, you can find cases of a team drafting 3 or so players after the first round who went on to have NHL careers(the Blackhawks in '04, Kings in '07, Bruins in '04, Sens in '09, Leafs in '06).

But it does represent the upper limit. You're also almost certainly talking about one or so marginal contributors or guys who only find their NHL game after multiple spots.

It's not entirely unheard of, you can find cases of a team drafting 3 or so players after the first round who went on to have NHL careers(the Blackhawks in '04, Kings in '07, Bruins in '04, Sens in '09, Leafs in '06).

But it does represent the upper limit. You're also almost certainly talking about one or so marginal contributors or guys who only find their NHL game after multiple spots.

Did those teams have 11 picks?

The '04 Blackhawks had 19.

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Give a man the reputation of an early riser and he can sleep 'til noon-Mark Twain

It's not entirely unheard of, you can find cases of a team drafting 3 or so players after the first round who went on to have NHL careers(the Blackhawks in '04, Kings in '07, Bruins in '04, Sens in '09, Leafs in '06).

But it does represent the upper limit. You're also almost certainly talking about one or so marginal contributors or guys who only find their NHL game after multiple spots.

Here we see that there is a higher success rate for overage players selected after the first round for both forwards and defenders. It’s not an incredible difference, but it definitely seems that looking to overage players after the first round will yield NHL players more often than targeting draft-year players will.

Still a pretty raw look at the overage advantages, if there even is any. The Success criteria is 200 games played.